


grace marked your heart (With quiet words I'll lead you in and out of the dark)

by wanderlustlover



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Community: milliways_bar, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 18:44:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not all joy. Waking up. </p><p>Like giving birth. That's the first thought. </p><p>Birth that is agony, this ripping apart of yourself, to bring something new, precious, fragile, perfect into the world. Birth, that is something she never remembered -- and is the first thing she forgot, first thing she remembered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	grace marked your heart (With quiet words I'll lead you in and out of the dark)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minkhollow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkhollow/gifts).



> Milliways_Bar Daily Entertainment Fics from June 21st.
> 
>  **Prompt:** no good deed goes unpunished, hope springs eternal

It's not all joy. Waking up. 

Like giving birth. That's the first thought. 

Birth that is agony, this ripping apart of yourself, to bring something new, precious, fragile, perfect into the world. Birth, that is something she never remembered -- and is the first thing she forgot, first thing she remembered. 

The birth of a child she never had, never raised, never remembered. The agony of her coming, and the agony of being parted from her only minutes later. New, precious, fragile, perfect, carrying the other half of her heart she had in another body now.

But there are too many memories. Too many lives. Lived as different people, colliding, clashing, crashing into each other. Things she never could have imagined could have fit into twenty-eight years. Such empty loneliness, for all the people who ever cared for her, loved her, loved them, supported them. No Red, no Grumpy, no magic, not friendships, no love.

David -- _Charming_ , her _Charming_ \-- alive, but in a coma, unrecognizable, alone. Then, married. Breaking one set of marriage vows against the reigns of True Love and another set. How even that brought only misery, and she'd given in, only to turn away entirely. To try to do the right thing. Emma always at her side. Her best friend. The one person to breach the cold lonleiness of three unending, unchanging decades, who brought her back, ripple by ripple.

But her daughter. Their daughter. Their 'hero,' Emma. Who was alone and without anyone, raised in a foreign land and such a harder system, she never even dreamed could exist with her hand resting on her stomach, daring to believe, to dream. Her confidant of too much, of every single thing. Who had a son. Who had a son, in prison, who gave him up. Henry. Beautiful, inquisitive, inspirational Henry who was so alone, so lonely before Emma came, too.

Is being raised by Regina, caged by her, held back and down and away by her. 

Every time she thinks it's too much to bear, too much grief, too much anger, too much horror, the center of her only comes back that much stronger. Wounded, deeply. Scarred, perhaps, forever. But not dead. Not beaten anymore by these slings and arrows, by this magic free world, whose references slide into her thoughts like breathing now, anymore than her outlawing had as a child. 

Because they are all still alive. They are all still together. Her friends, their friends, all here. Save one, and her heart beats, with savage unfairness, on that wall. That one, her savior, the one person who could have killed her, but granted her freedom, safety, her life, so close and never once her gratitude for the right things to him. Another thing taken from her, from Emma. 

But they are still together. Most of them, and mostly in one piece, if everything is scattered and broken. Even if she fell into her old world, unwilling to miss even one more second of her daughter's life. To let her slip away, fall away, be alone. Ever. Ever again. They are alive. And they will find each other. And they'll prove, love and loyalty, family and friends, will always triumph.

They will always find each other.


End file.
